David Herd will be reading from Through, his latest book of poetry published this April. The poems resume Herd’s inquiry into the language of public space and addresses the ways in which contemporary public language has been rendered officially hostile. Considering the risks that such official hostility poses to human intimacy, Through sets out to register broken affections, and to re-explore possibilities of solidarity and trust. Countering the enclosures of public discourse, the poems embrace instead ‘a language in transition’, one in which meaning is multiple, ‘echoing into place a genuine and subsisting relationship’.

Herd has given readings and lectures all over the world and his poems, essays and reviews have been widely published in magazines, journals and newspapers. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent and a co-organiser of Refugee Tales.